Noemi Weber's 'Beißen' at DREI, Cologne, Reimagines Still Life

Noemi Weber's first gallery exhibition, 'Beißen' (German for biting), at DREI in Cologne, presents oversized canvases that challenge the conventions of still life painting. Weber paints unprimed canvases on the ground, stacking them so paint seeps through, and uses acrylic mixed with cellulose and marble dust to create succulent, rugged surfaces. Her works depict ripe and rotting fruit—pears, plums, grapes—in bulbous shapes of bright yellow, red, purple, with speckles of grey and brownish guts, moving between abstraction and decomposition. Weber critiques the Renaissance legacy of linear perspective, which she links to hegemonic power relations and the overrepresentation of 'Man' as described by Sylvia Wynter. She breaks this loop through enlargement, abstraction, and deliberate technique, enacting a form of double consciousness (W.E.B. Du Bois). The exhibition runs at DREI, Cologne, and Weber's work is also on view at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen's 'Your Museum! Your Collection!' at K20, Düsseldorf. Weber (b. 1989, German) lives and works in Düsseldorf, studied at Bard College and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Katharina Grosse, and has shown at Raketenstation Hombroich, Kunsthalle Bremen, and Ludwig Forum, among others.